Abstract
THERE is now a consensus that in bulk high-temperature superconductors, it is the grain boundaries that limit the attainable critical current. Their behaviour resembles that of low-temperature superconductors containing 'weak links1, 2 (regions of suppressed superconducting order). Here we report detailed measurements of the current–voltage characteristics of ,YBa2Cu3O7 and find that the critical currents are too low, by two or three orders of magnitude, to be straightforwardly accommodated by classical weak-link models. This discrepancy is sufficiently fundamental to suggest that weak-link superconductivity in high-temperature superconductors has yet to be described adequately.
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Bungre, S., Meisels, R., Shen, Z. et al. Are classical weak-link models adequate to explain the current–voltage characteristics in bulk YBa2Cu3O7?. Nature 341, 725–727 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/341725a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/341725a0
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